Study: Some voters swayed by looks

First impressions matter in politics — and according to new research, they may be all some voters get before heading to the polls.

A new Massachusetts Institute of Technology study found that so-called “low-information voters” — those who watch a lot of TV but who aren’t up-to-date on policy issues — are most likely vote for a candidate based on looks alone.

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POLITICO 44

For every 10-point increase a candidate gets because of his or her appearance, about half of that increase comes from the voters with the least amount of political knowledge and the most time spent in front of the TV.

The study analyzed data from two surveys conducted during the 2006 midterm elections: the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which surveyed voters on their candidate preferences and television-watching habits; and a study headed by Princeton University professor Alex Todorov, which asked participants to rate ’06 Senate and gubernatorial candidates based solely on appearance.

“People judge other people all the time when they first meet them, but once they learn more about them they update their impressions and forget their initial judgments,” said MIT associate professor Gabriel Lenz, who co-authored the study. “The problem with democracy is that we ask people to vote in all these elections where they don’t know all that much except their first impression.”

The number of TV-watching, low-engagement voters in the United States isn’t insignificant, Lenz said. He predicted that the number of voters in this category could be “enough to sway a reasonable percentage of elections.”

All told, the effect has the potential to change the outcome of a race – though it’s much more likely to affect state-level races than presidential races, because people do tend to learn at least some information about presidential candidates throughout the course of a campaign, Lenz said.

Lenz guessed that of the current crop of 2012 GOP hopefuls, Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann and Jon Huntsman might benefit from the appearance effect. “Newt Gingrich, less so,” he said.

Lenz and MIT professor Chappell Lawson conducted a similar study on candidate appearances, published last fall, which found that voters in three different countries – Brazil, India and the United States – find similar appearance-based traits important in determining whether a politician is competent.

Ultimately, Lenz said, the study’s findings are disheartening: Watching candidates’ ads and news coverage of the races seems to have little effect on most people in this “low-information” group.

“We as a nation, or democracies in general, should do a better job about making information super available, or more easily available,” Lenz said. Some studies suggest candidate appearances on daytime television talk shows are more effective in reaching the TV-watching public than news reports.

The paper, titled “Looking the Part: Television Leads Less Informed Citizens to Vote Based on Candidates’ Appearance,” was published this month in the American Journal of Political Science.

Sidebar: [The arrogance of any Gospel Preacher getting into Politics or Picking One Political Party Over Another, Letting Grover Norquist be higher than Christ, Letting Koch dictate rather than a balance supporting of The Whole Word. We should only vote to show agreement that we can share this Temporal Land, we shall live in peace together, abide & forgive our differences, under Caesar's Government (and we, as "Born Again" must be Independent of Party, choosing best solutions from both Republicans and Democrats) until Our True Government Arrives... some lost Baptists & Evangelicals, huh?]

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- U.S. President Barack Obama late Wednesday called on Americans to strive for more civility in the wake of an attempted assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona. Speaking at a memorial service for the six people killed during the attack on Giffords, Obama said that "at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized ... it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds." The shootings have prompted debate over whether political divisions in the U.S. helped lead to the tragedy.

Well we know that Obama got 96% of the black vote. The same group approves of his job performance at 92%. Wonder if his color has anything to do with that? Naaaah, couldn't be. Black people are not racists.

Same group stood in line in Detroit to get government handouts and calling it Obama money.

A new Massachusetts Institute of Technology study found that so-called “low-information voters” — those who watch a lot of TV but who aren’t up-to-date on policy issues — are most likely vote for a candidate based on looks alone.

For every 10-point increase a candidate gets because of his or her appearance, about half of that increase comes from the voters with the least amount of political knowledge and the most time spent in front of the TV.

Perfect description of Obama's base - the 50% who don't pay taxes, collect welfare, lay around the double wide eating salsa and chips while watching American Idol! Anyone with an IQ over 60 wouldn't give him a second look!

Where is Obama's picture? Talk about the pot calling the kettle black - and what of JFK? I remember my aunt voting for JFK just for "his looks" PULEASE ! Anyone recall a Zogby poll back after the 2008 election of Obama showing "his voters" to be the most ignorant bunch of rubes yet. Once again, POLITICO does it's job trying it's best to thwart anything positive about the GOP . Where has the recent memory of the "Messiah" Obama gone? All those young white girls going crazy over him? Remember the rockstar campaign stops? Hypocrisy, Politico, hypocrisy.......

A new Massachusetts Institute of Technology study found that so-called “low-information voters” — those who watch a lot of TV but who aren’t up-to-date on policy issues — are most likely vote for a candidate based on looks alone.

The baggies definitely fit the "low-information" voters and elected representatives. They have the least legistlative skills, least public service experience, and the least knowledge of the very jobs they were elected to (in the case of the mid-term elections by 25-28% of the 43% of eligibile voters that bothered to show up). Representing less than 25% of American voters, they claim they represent the American people---they are liars, they do not even represent the Republican Party. \

Notice that they (like Palin, Bachmann, Rubio, Pawlenty, etc.) are the ones that say that it is fine to default on the National Debt thinking that somehow they will be able to kill programs, departments, and services for the poor and working class they do not like while keeping the tax breaks and subsidies for the rich. They are both dumb and self-serving and morally bankrupt. They are the faux patriots, the faux Christians, the faux populists. Judgment Day cannot come soon enough. No amount of GOP spin or burdening wealth will save them.

These are people who should not be voting but do so in great numbers, especially for presidential campaigns.

If the U.S. continues to re-elect inexperienced people like Obama or war-starters like Bush, we as a nation need to seriously re-think our "right to vote" guarantee. It sounds harsh,but maybe the qualifications should be stiffer: either you pay or have paid property taxes, can pass a citizenship test (similar to passing a driver's exam), or some other criteria that culls out non-serious voters who have seen a photo of someone and will vote for him/her for the most important elected position in the world.